Forum:Portable infoboxes
Hey Fire Emblem Wiki! We're reaching out to a few of our top communities, hoping to get you on board with the migration to the new . And we have tools to help! Why we're doing this Simply put: Most current infobox structure translates very poorly to mobile experiences, and indeed any device that doesn't use desktop-style displays. On desktops and laptops, they often look amazing. The problem is that Wikia's traffic is trending mobile. There is an important graph from our forum post about infoboxes a couple weeks back, and I want to share it here as well - see to the right. Mobile is the future. Not just for Wikia, but for the web as a whole. Take a look at the recent trends and future growth predictions for mobile traffic - it's staggering. We partnered with the Wikia community to create this new markup to make sure that your hard work can be displayed on mobile devices (as well as any future technologies) easily and without any new coding conventions. It'll take some effort up front, to be sure, but we're here to help, and the work you put in now will pay for itself tenfold in the future. Tools we've designed to ease the process We've enabled two new features on your community. One is a tool for migrating the "old" infobox code to the new markup. It identifies templates on your wikia that look like infobox templates and places a box on the right rail of the template page. When you click the "Generate draft markup" button in this box, it opens a new tab containing a draft of your infobox using the new markup. The second is a new feature on that will highlight which infoboxes on your wikia have not been migrated to the new infobox markup. It's fairly intuitive - you can click on the infobox title link itself to see the old markup, or simply click the "Convert!" button on the right, which performs the same action as the "Generate draft markup" button. is our help page for the new markup, while the migration tool is covered in more depth on . I know KhangND has already checked out migrating Template:WeaponInfobox, but wasn't happy with the results. I will try drafting it again, and will see whether I can create something closer to the original design, and I'll certainly watch this forum post for any questions. Thanks for reading, it's much appreciated! -- Kirkburn (talk) 17:55, July 22, 2015 (UTC) Discussion I've redrafted Template:WeaponInfobox/Draft, making tweaks to make it behave much more like the existing template - a few quick lines of CSS has made it appear much more like the existing templates (refresh if it's not showing the border and shadow). You can see two example infoboxes using the updated design on that template page. How does it look to you? (I also flipped a switch that means Common.css is loaded natively, so the import on Wikia.css is no longer needed - this should mean edits behave more reliably.) -- Kirkburn (talk) 18:20, July 22, 2015 (UTC) :It does look good now but is making edits in the CSS the only way to manipulate how these converted infoboxes look? Because it's pretty inconvenient for normal users like me to make change to the infobox when it needs some kind of spruce up. Sorry if what I just asked already written on the help page, I haven't read it ^^ Khang Talk 03:25, July 23, 2015 (UTC) ::Generally, yes - it's much better to make the changes using CSS. However, that's not simply because that's how the new infoboxes work, but because it's better practice in general (separation of content and layout). Using external CSS also makes it easier to adapt infoboxes to different situations - mobile screens being the big one of course, where we can make the infobox adapt itself to the available screen area much more effectively. ::We're continuing to work on getting CSS caching to be less of a problem, so you should be able to experience any changes you've made pretty quickly. ::You can also give each infobox a different class (and even use a variable to change that class), so different infoboxes can be given different looks. There's more info on that aspect here: . Kirkburn (talk) 16:59, July 23, 2015 (UTC) :I see, thanks for the information, I'll have a look on the help page and help out with converting the infoboxes for the sake of mobile readers. Khang Talk 03:04, July 24, 2015 (UTC) ::Awesome - definitely let me know if you have any questions about it, of if there's any specific ones you'd like me to try drafting up for you. Kirkburn (talk) 14:13, July 24, 2015 (UTC) Hey there, checking in! Looks like you've been converting over a bunch of your infoboxes - that's awesome :) Do you have any questions about it that I could answer, or need any assistance? Kirkburn (talk) 16:46, August 4, 2015 (UTC) Post Conversion Discussion Now that the conversion is complete, how do you feel it all went? Was the tool easy to use? Do you feel like it could use improvement and if so, what do you think would have made the tool better? Did you find certain things easier to do without it? We would love to hear any feedback you have regarding the entire infobox conversion process and use it to help other communities. Thanks! Pinkachu (talk) 22:08, November 5, 2015 (UTC) :Yes, the tool was easy to use and did almost all of what have to be done for the conversion, saving me a lot of time. I think it did its job well enough so I don't have any suggestions =] --[[User:KhangND|'Khang']] (talk) 00:41, November 6, 2015 (UTC)